Before we move away from the building that our brief combat took place on I glance up at the roof. The Violet’s first spell has left a notable divot in the shingled roof with the wooden skeleton of the building laid bare. Glancing into the Mundane I see that a large tree branch has fallen onto the building leaving similar damage.

As the group begins to move I keep close watch through the eyes of my three remaining Greys for any signs of further enemy movement out in the waning dusk. Nothing stirs as my group moves from lot to lot ever further from the command center. Finally, after about thirty minutes of progress we pass over a final boulevard and into an undeveloped forest.

Before we completely enter the trees I look back at the city. Flashes of light can still be seen in the distance as artillery continues to pound the second line. One spell soars particularly high and passes the second line landing somewhere behind the defenses. It seems the second line is already beginning to weaken. It probably will not last the night. I turn away, I feel I should be concerned yet I am not. Nothing can beat the Maker, he is the greatest of all things and I rest in a biological certainty of his eventual success. I turn away and move into the forest with the rest of my group.

We are out of the city now but we are still on the enormous peninsula that the gold Blue showed me. It will take us all night and some of the morning to cross the peninsula to the strait. We set off at a quick pace the Greys scouting ahead of us for danger. Nothing rears its head but I feel on edge after the earlier attack. As we move some of the Yellows leave thin trails of smoke behind them. These are the Yellows that are converting the essence from our earlier assailant. As they digest the essence back into a pure form for use the essence that is unusable is converted into a smoke-like substance and released from small pores in the Yellows’ pseudo-chitin. This smoke is mostly essence that is too firmly entrenched in its current form, it would take more energy than is gained to break it down and so it is simply released. Eventually, the smoke will settle in a thin layer over the area until it is found by more hardy scavengers.

After about four hours of progress we stop next to a large lake. Coptos do not tire in a conventional sense but maintaining mental coordination over such a large group mental wears me down. For Yellow’s or Grey’s especially if I simply ordered them to follow they would take suboptimal paths or spend unnecessary amounts of time getting past obstacles, oversight is necessary for quick movement. Thankfully with my newly remade silver Blue body, I do not need to be carried to keep a quick pace.

I break my mental control over my group keeping only the senses of the Greys in the back of my mind. Though most of Coptos don’t react much other than gazing around, my thinking Red walks over to the lake and stares at it, sometimes prodding the water and watching it react. We will wait for half an hour while I recover before moving on. While we wait I watch as the Violet makes a connection with one of the Reds. The Red walks over to him and drops the Fey’s eye into the Violet’s waiting hand. The eye seems to be a little worse for wear but otherwise fine.

The Violet looks at it for a little bit before the green Blue walks over to him. He hands the eye to the green Blue who carefully places it in its mouth before swallowing it. The Violet looks over at me before connecting.

It can store essence without damaging it, in case you were wondering.* I no longer question* wise grin*

After the time had passed I felt mentally rested and we continued on our way. We made relatively good progress. The terrain is forest made up of short, widely spaced trees most of which didn’t have the large leaves of the trees I had seen in the city instead of being covered in tightly packed needles. Occasionally we have to detour around lakes or large rock protrusions but beyond that, there are no obstacles. Less than a dozen times we have to pass over large stretches of road that crisscross the landscape.

After we cross one of these we find ourselves suddenly on the coast. Huge cliffs dive down into the crashing waves below. Dawn is breaking at our back and very faintly across the water, another coastline can be seen. Now we just have to figure out how to cross.